VMs: RE: question

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim wrote:
>
> I am not trying to be funny, but, what happens to
> entropy when the writer
> writes: BHEE for the letter B; KHAT for cat, Blahkd og
> for black dog; or,
> juggles letters according to sound or near sound like
> K, Q, hard C, and,
> just to be difficult, CH? What happens if he adds a
> letter that isn't even
> in the word, or, leaves one out that is? What happens
> when only the last
> letters, or, even the first letters of a string of
> words are only to be
> used as "text," making the rest of those letters trash?
> These examples are following visual rules that I am
> making up, and, on top
> of everything else, "could" change every time, second
> time, or fourth time
> they are used.

I personally can't speak to the 'entropy' problem, as I believe
the VMS to be cipher.  However, variations of spelling, phonetic
spellings, etc., were a common feature of medieval manuscripts,
and some very interesting views on this come from one of the
oddest of places - Shakespeare's First Folio.  The choices of
spelling by different typesetters actually allowed researchers to
estimate when each page was set, in what order, and by whom!
(assigning numbers to different typesetters, since the names were
not known.)  Coupled with other physical evidence and printing
artifacts, this makes an extremely fascinating presentation in
literary detective work.

If the VMS is not encoded, I don't see how entropy itself can
offer an explanation for the oddities it contains.  Multiple
repetitions of groups like 8oe, 8am, etc., and 'words' that differ
only by one glyph strung along next to each other in many places.
No one has yet offered a language that can answer these questions,
and any 'pattern' search (something I do for unknown ciphers)
would yield no spoken language that even closely matches these
anomalies.

Some earlier researchers thought the structure resembled
Pig-Latin, which might be one of the closer entropy matches, but
so far no language, including Chinese, can account for the
oddities demonstrated in these 200+ pages.

One manuscript I'm currently investigating uses only three letters
to communicate its message.  It does it by using capital letters
only, but I wonder what the entropy of such a manuscript would be
against any known language if it were written entirely in only
three letters?

I guess my point is this - language tools, while interesting, have
not been tried against the range of cipher man is capable of, and
are not designed to do so either.  What would be the entropy of a
'Bright' shorthand document, or any other early shorthand system?
Would 'entropy' identify a Bright system, a later system, or even
an early hybrid, based on numbers alone?  Not likely.  Would a
hybrid system 'react' like language?  Most probably, and would
give off entropic signs of language similar to the base language.
What about a 'hybrid' cipher?  Pretty much the same thing, in my
view.

And when calculating entropy, what does one use as the recognized
glyphset?  Is <sh> actually one glyph, or two?  Is <ccc> a single
glyph, a combination of two, or three individual glyphs?  Surely
one's interpretation of what constitutes a glyph would have a
noticeable effect on the numbers generated by any program.  If it
didn't, the program is simply too general to be useful, since
general information does not rule out multiple interpretations of
the data.  Perhaps entropy data might be used to establish whether
a character is a glyph or combination?  Again, probably not.

My advice, free so it can be ignored, is that any serious
researcher would establish bedrock basics before flying high on
supposition.  Identify and establish the glyphset, within a margin
of error, and build upon that set when new information is
processed.  Currier's method was visually correct, and allowed for
additional information to be incorporated.  If the thousands of
examples of <sh> are seen my the vast majority of us a single
glyph, and we never write or separate the 's' from the 'h' when
referring to this glyph, then <sh> is an extremely poor
representation of what we're all seeing.

After establishing in ones mind what constitutes a glyph, conduct
a survey of the use of each glyph, noting variants from the norm.
Variants offer another set of information, primarily that each set
has a recurring subset of variations.  Every pattern is another
weave in the tapestry.

This fool will leave well enough alone for now, knowing that many
will ignore my advice, and continue to look to 'tools' to answer
what only a disciplined and ordered study will uncover.

GC

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